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Annick studied him closely. He did seem a very nice man, as Maximus had said he was. He was of indeterminate age, obviously old enough to have Maximus as a son, but still difficult to pinpoint. His wife even more so, her face dramatically lacking in lines. They were a beautiful family. Violet stunning, Minerva an understated mourning dove. Elizabeth King the sort of blonde beauty that all celebrities aspired to.
She could see how Maximus had felt like he lived a charmed life. And how badly it would’ve hurt to have had that challenged. To have lost that in any regard.
“Yes,” Annick said, looking directly at the older man. “He’s quite brilliant. And I think...much more than anyone realizes.” She could feel his warning glare burning into the side of her face. “I’m quite lucky to have him.”
“Anyone would be,” Robert King agreed.
Dinner was served then, a basket of pastries coming out before the meal. Annick smiled.
“Is this a tradition here?” Minerva asked.
“No,” Annick said happily. “Well, I suppose it will be.”
By the end of it all, the tension she felt toward even his father was forgotten, because she felt surrounded by this love that she had not been near for years.
And she wanted so desperately to be part of it. She wanted so desperately to belong to someone. Wanted so much to be...
She cut that thought off. It did no good to dwell on the things she did not have control over. It did no good to wish for the clock to reverse. To wish for life to be different. She had done it hundreds of times. She knew it did no good.
She had lived the life she did. That was all.
Tomorrow she would marry into this family. Something that she could never have foreseen. Something entirely different to the life she had imagined loomed ahead of her. Tomorrow, things would change.
When dinner was done, she excused herself, and she didn’t even wait for Maximus. She found herself wandering away from the bedrooms. Away from the ballroom. Away from every civilized part of the castle, to a place that she hadn’t been back to since the day that she had been set free.
Her heart constricted in her chest as she made her way down the dark, narrow steps. As she descended down a level, and then another. All the way to the lower dungeon.
This place was a reminder. Of where she had come from. Of what really mattered. It wasn’t her feelings or his family or...
Her dungeon lay untouched since she’d been freed.
It needed to stand. As it was. At least, it felt to her it did.
It was not a grimy jail cell. It was a room. With a bed in the corner. No windows. It was dingy, not clean. Atop her small nightstand a copy of the Bible and Anne of Green Gables sat there still, the two books that she had read the most during her isolation, as they were the only ones perennially left behind by her tutor. There was a small desk in the corner, which had also been there since the beginning. And nothing more. She felt small here. That trembling sensation that she’d always battled in her chest loomed large.
“What are you doing down here?”
“I...I might ask you the same thing?”
“I followed you.”
“I did not give you permission to do so.”
“Since when have I needed your permission for anything?”
“This is not to share.” Tears filled her eyes. “I want you to go away.”
“Is this where they kept you?”
“It is not your...”
“Is this where they kept you, Annick? In this room like a...like a patient at a mental ward?”
“Yes,” she said.
“This is...disgusting.”
“It is,” she agreed.
